Trails

 The temperatures cooled off this weekend!  Yesterday afternoon. we took a walk through one of the many trails in Erzenhausen.  We bought Ethan and Lincoln a scooter to share until our household goods arrive.  

 We bought Lincoln a balance bike.  It has no pedals and you use your feet like a scooter.  Once you get going, you lift your legs and balance yourself.  It is supposed to help riding a bike without training wheels. He is doing FANTASTIC on it!

 The boys went to the clump of trees and then turned around.  It was a slight decline on the way back.  They loved going fast on their bikes and scooters!

The views are amazing!  Nate is taking it all in!  :)

Internet

So apparently, the internet/phone people lost our order.  We are now on the schedule for August 7th.  RIDICULOUS!  Until then, we will be having fun at the library or internet cafe to get our cyber fix!

Heidelberg

We got up early Saturday morning to head to Heidelburg, Germany.  The town is really cute, but the castle is the main attraction in the town!

 We payed to take a train up to the castle and boy were we glad.  It was straight up hill on a cobblestone path!  The castle has been damaged three times.  It is pretty much in ruins, but it was spectacular!

 The castle sits on a hill and has the most gorgeous views of Heidelburg!

 We very quickly realized that we needed to go on the guided tour to get into the castle rooms.  So as we waited, we found a cafe.  Nate and Ethan looked at the tour book to get ready for the tour!

 This was one of the views from the castle!  GORGEOUS!  

We found a little cafe that served brats on a bun.  We ordered and sat on a bench to eat lunch.  This was our view!

Instead of waiting for the train, we walked back down.  We got some more awesome views on the way down.  As we made it to the car, it started pouring down rain!  Perfect timing!!!

Dino Park

 The boys and I went to DINO park today!  

We walked around and looked at the dinosaurs.  Ethan had me take his picture at every dinosaur.  I am only showing you this one because it might a few days to upload ever single picture I had to take of the silly boy!

 My little pirate spotted this ship RIGHT away.  As he was playing, Ethan ran off and I went to find him.  In the hunt for Ethan, Lincoln thought that we left him.  I turned around and he was frantically searching for me with tears in his eyes.  I ran over to him and he YELLED, "You scared ME!"  It was totally something I would have said to him!  Poor fella!

 This is where Ethan ran off to!  It was this cool basket that you could swing and push.  They had me push them around forever!

 This rope thing was so cool.  There were a series of about seven or eight rope lines that led to a huge rope net.  Link tried, but wasn't strong enough to make it.  Ethan made it the whole way around.

Lincoln loved, loved, loved the large slide!  He ran up and down this thing twenty times!!  For ten euro we will definitely go back!  Next time, we will bring our lunch and make a day of it!

Rainy

I wish it were as nice and sunny as when this picture was taken last weekend.  It's been super rainy and cold for the past four days!  We found an internet cafe on base and have been chilling out surfing the internet and playing the DS'.  Hope you all are staying warm and dry!

Helpers

As I was putting things away in the kitchen today, I noticed the boys "helping" Hermann. He was trimming the weepy tree.

Our weepy tree has a huge haircut! No more hide and seek for a while!  

We will be offline for a while.  We move into the house tomorrow morning.  We are waiting on the German phone company and internet company to plug us in.  Nate over heard a person in line asking why it took so long and the man replied, "Because you are in Germany!"  So, on that note, see you hopefully soon!!!

Nancy, France

We went to Nancy, France on Saturday!

We spent the day in the heart of Nancy.  It was beautiful.

We had to stop at our first pay bathroom.  Twenty euro cents to open the door.

We walked and came upon what looked like a mini-Champs Elysees.

The gates into the courtyard were amazing!

The Stanislas.  

We have been blessed with interacting with Germans that speak a little English.  We were not so lucky here in France.  We stopped at a restaurant to eat.  We thought they had pizza.  The waitress spoke NO English and we guessed at our order.  Imagine our surprise when quiche arrived instead of pizza! 

Ethan liked the quiche Lorraine and the tomato quiche.  

 After lunch, we found an amazing park called the Pepiniere!  The trees and flowers were gorgeous.  Everything was so green!  Lincoln was bound and determined to hang or climb in this tree!

 It was so big!  All four of us stretched our arms around it and were barely able to touch fingers!

 We found some climbing structures in the park!

 Ethan needed some encouragement from Daddy to jump across these things.  The other kids in the park were climbing and jumping.  Our guy was a little more cautious!

 BEST PARK EVER!  We found slushies and crepes!!

 Chocolate and Nutella Crepe!  DELICIOUS!

 This park was huge!  We also found mini-golf!!!

 This kid is so competitive.  When we finished, he asked Nate what the score was!  Nate told him he was not scoring the cards!  We are just having fun!

We spent a good five hours exploring Nancy, playing golf, playing on the playground, and eating!  Someone was a little tired at the end of the day and so were the kids!  haha!

Tour de France

We had high hopes of seeing some of the Tour de France on Saturday.  The tour made a stop in Tomblaine, which is about an hour and a half from us.  We spent all week kicking around if we should go or not.  We decided to give it a try, but if it didn't work we would just go the extra ten miles into Nancy, France.

 On the way, we noticed this bus.

 Followed by this car.  People were slowing down and honking at them!  We got super excited that we may just be able to follow them right into the heart of Tomblaine!

 We got closer and closer, and then we saw these cars!  About the time we saw these cars, we also lots of stopped traffic!  We quickly realized that our hopes of making it into Tomblaine were probably not going to happen.  A police car zoomed up on the shoulder and waved the Tour de France cars over to the shoulder so that he could give them an escort!  We, on the other hand, sat in stopped traffic for about twenty minutes.  

We got right behind one of the cars.  Look how tiny those seats are!!!  My behind hurts looking at them.  The wheels are so tiny, as well!  Maybe next year!!

Just bragging

This is the view from our back patio!  You can't see past the bush on the left, but there are two beautiful white horses grazing on some German grass!
 We have a huge weepy tree in the corner of the yard. The boys are always hiding under there.  So, I climbed under there with the kids today.  It was pretty cool under there!

 Does anyone know where Lincoln is?  We played that game all afternoon!

Ethan and I were playing soccer when crazy man came out with an enormous stick!  Of course, he found a sword!  It's Lincoln!!!

Happiness

 We bought the boys two soccer balls yesterday.   It's all Ethan ever wants.  A ball.  Any ball.  

 The problem is that he likes to structure play.  He likes to have rules and everyone has to follow them.....especially when playing ball.!  That is my nice way of saying "BULLYING!"

This little boy is sooo unstructured.  He would rather lay on the cow thingy or hunt for burried treasure in the sand box.  Our trip to the playground, to cool off, ended up unsuccesful!  Ethan was mad.  Lincoln was mad.  I was frustrated.....and maybe mad!

Fourth of July

We took full advantage of Nate's day off today!  We went SHOPPING!  On Tuesday, we move into the new house.  Our household goods will not be there, but we will be able to get some loaner furniture from the base.
We knew that our lamps and small household appliances would not work over here and we didn't want to run everything on a transformer, so we went to four big German stores and got pretty much everything we needed.
It was funny to go into the German stores and hear so many people speaking English.  I guess a lot of Americans had the same idea we did.
As we took the purchases to the new house, we noticed that Hermann and his wife were there working AGAIN.  They are putting so much energy into getting the house just right for us.  When he learned that we had two little boys, he decided to get new carpet upstairs instead of just cleaning it.
We bought the boys two balls to play with today.  As Nate and I started moving the stuff inside, I told the boys to go play.  We looked out the window and Hermann's wife was playing soccer with Ethan.
I am really excited about moving in on Tuesday!  I think we have two sweet landlords!!